CUSTOMER STORY
Region: North America
Industry: Professional Services
Department: BI/Analytics/Data Science
Company Background:
Opportune is a consulting and solutions firm focused on solving complex operational challenges across energy and supply chain environments. Working with some of the most disruption-prone industries, Opportune helps organizations modernize operations, improve logistics performance, and make faster, data-driven decisions. Its work often sits at the intersection of analytics, infrastructure, and real-world execution, where timing and accuracy directly impact cost, safety, and customer outcomes.
In energy and logistics, a shifting storm path can quickly become an operational crisis. The challenge is connecting a fast-changing forecast data to the on-the-ground decisions that must happen before disruption reaches the supply chain network.
Opportune, a consulting and solutions firm focused on energy and supply chain environments, kept running into that gap with clients. Teams had access to weather forecasts, operational data, and supply chain systems — but none of it was connected in a way that enabled real decisions.
So Opportune built something different: StormOptics, an application powered entirely by Alteryx that connects live NOAA weather data directly to supply chain decision-making — turning a slow, manual process into an automated one that runs in under a minute.
The idea for StormOptics began with a convenience store client operating in locations across hurricane-prone states.
Whenever a hurricane or major storm approached, one employee served as the organization’s unofficial weather expert. He would use a map and PowerPoint presentation to explain where he believed the storm was heading and identify the store locations that could be impacted.
From there, teams scrambled to determine which gas station locations to prioritize, where inventory should come from, and how deliveries should be sequenced. “Then the storm would shift paths, and all of that work would be completely wasted,” said Michael Wohlfarth, Director of Business Intelligence and Analytics at Opportune.
The consequences were more than operational inconvenience. Fuel could be sent to the wrong stores, drivers could be assigned impractical loads, and gas station locations in evacuation zones could risk running out of fuel. “People are trying to fill their tanks”, Wohlfarth said, “the last thing you want to happen is for a store to run out.”
Wohlfarth saw an opportunity to rethink the solution entirely. Using Alteryx as the foundation, the team built StormOptics, an AI-driven fully application that:
The system also matches drivers to deliveries based on their real-time location, remaining hours of service, and hazmat certification, accounting for the specific roads and bridges that fuel trucks are restricted from using. Because each truck carries fuel in separate compartments, a single driver can split one load across two or three nearby stores rather than making a separate trip for each. StormOptics tracks all of it — driver availability, supply point, and delivery sequence — to build a fulfillment matrix and propose a load plan, which a dispatcher reviews before it goes out.
Because the entire pipeline — data ingestion, risk scoring, inventory logic, and driver assignment — runs natively inside Alteryx, Opportune was able to deliver an AI-driven application without standing up separate data science infrastructure or a dedicated modeling team.
StormOptics fundamentally changed how Opportune’s clients respond to disruption and the impact is substantial.
Financially, it helps organizations avoid hundreds of thousands of dollars in losses per major storm event.
Operationally, it’s just as meaningful. What once took hours of coordination now happens in near real time with workflows running in under a minute.
“It turned out, we have to have this,” That was Wohlfarth’s own reaction the first time StormOptics accurately predicted a storm path that manual forecasting had missed — the moment the tool went from a promising project to something the business couldn’t operate without.
While StormOptics was initially designed around the needs of convenience store networks in hurricane-prone regions, Opportune sees a much broader opportunity.
The application’s core weather-tracking capability can be transferred to new clients relatively quickly. The surrounding operational model can then be configured based on the customer’s data, transportation network, supply structure, and decision requirements. “It’s very plug and play but there is a level of customization,” Wohlfarth explained.
As Alteryx’s AI capabilities continue to expand, Opportune plans to extend their solutions across more industries and geographies — bringing the same real-time, decision-ready approach to any organization whose operations depend on getting ahead of a disruption instead of reacting to one.
StormOptics replaces manual forecast briefings with a continuously updated risk score for every location in a storm's path, cutting hours of work down to a workflow that runs in under a minute.
Alteryx matches drivers to deliveries based on location, hours of service, and hazmat certification, then builds split-load plans across multiple stores per truck, replacing hours of manual dispatch work.
StormOptics helps clients avoid misallocated inventory, wasted routing, and fines from running a location dry — saving hundreds of thousands per storm.
Region: North America
Industry: Professional Services
Department: BI/Analytics/Data Science
Company Background:
Opportune is a consulting and solutions firm focused on solving complex operational challenges across energy and supply chain environments. Working with some of the most disruption-prone industries, Opportune helps organizations modernize operations, improve logistics performance, and make faster, data-driven decisions. Its work often sits at the intersection of analytics, infrastructure, and real-world execution, where timing and accuracy directly impact cost, safety, and customer outcomes.